Grace Behind Power
By VAHVA Fitness on December 7th. 2018
High level stability and balance work to develop real athleticism that transfers to sports, martial arts and dance.
At first sight this video probably looks like it's a form of dance - in fact some of the freestyle movements would go with a contemporary dance sequence quite fittingly!
However, first and foremost this is stability training at the highest level. Although you are balancing here, this is not the traditional way of balance training where you are using your arms and movement of your body to help you stay up.
That kind of balance training where you are wiggling a lot is very specific - it's a form of skill training to help you stay standing up. We are not doing that here.
If you look closely how this training is done, the upper body and arms remain very stable. The same actually happens in the foot and the leg - you only use the minimal amount of movement to balance.
At the highest level, your foot would not actually move at all - the whole body would be as rigid as a rock except the area you are purposely moving (and developing).
You are not balancing with movement. You are balancing by stabilizing with your body - with pure strength alone. This develops strength incredibly well in the entire body.
If you were to do this in the traditional way of balancing with movement, you would destroy the effectiveness of the exercise.
Only by learning how to stabilize the body and eliminating unnecessary movement, this type of training will work and produce the greatest benefits.
We are talking about adding real muscle to your frame and of course athletic performance thanks to the improved body control, strength and support.
Ultimately, this is body control at a very high level because almost the entire body stays stable (fighting against the forces that try to knock you down!) but you are still moving the body through specific joints (here mostly the hip and knee joints).
This requires a very developed mind because you need to learn how to stabilize one area while learning how to move another. As a result, you are also refining your central nervous system.
How to Develop Superhuman Levels of Stability
This is easier said than done! When we showed one leg stability on Instagram, a lot of people were surprised how difficult it is (it's as hard as training can be).
Moreover, a lot of people think they can do this but in reality they are using shaking and other body movements to help themselves stay up instead of contracting the feet and leg muscles for balance.
Again, this is a very high level and should be reached progressively with correct preliminary exercises. We cover all of these in Athlete 20XX. The program may look like it's athletic training at first but in reality it's universal strength training.
We would consider the difficulty of these movements at the same level as the one arm handstand which may surprise a lot of people.
One arm handstand looks more impressive because it's a movement a lot of people would never fathom to achieve. In fact, probably not everyone can even achieve it unless they have the right body type and genetics.
Balancing on one leg? Anyone can actually achieve this as long as their legs are naturally functional.
Moreover, one arm handstand is mostly wasted training when it comes to functional performance you need in sports, martial arts or dance. It takes years (if not decades) to achieve it and the transfer is very limited to anything.
This kind of one leg stability training done correctly has a direct transfer to sports, martial arts and dance where you are mostly performing standing up.
In dance, you can expect your balance and body control to improve by a massive margin. In martial arts the same but also your takedown defense should get better. In sports, you will have more power and speed.
We didn't get into stability training for the sake of stability training - we realized that we had to get good at this to become faster, more controlled and more powerful.
You see, stability training creates speed and power. It also creates agility because the greater support you have, the better the base you have for speed and power.
It may sound paradoxical but to become super fast and agile, you have to become super stable and rigid.
This is why the best athletes from Lebron James to Cristiano Ronaldo do a lot of stability training - they know what they are doing.
The only problem with this kind of stability training is that it's very easy to do wrong. You have to master the right principles and mind-muscle connection to really make this work.
Just mindlessly balancing on your feet won't work. Stability balls also never work unless you know how to use them (99% use them incorrectly and a result label them as useless).
Stay strong.
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